“No, you can’t.” Logan shifted his left arm to make it easier for Ah Yan, the young Chinaman who had been the target of Obee’s first shot, to run the wet rag in his hand over the wound in Logan’s shoulder. Lily gingerly touched the bandage on her leg. Her fall against the tree root had scraped off a large patch of skin on the back of her left calf. Ah Yan had cleaned it for her and wrapped it up in a plain cotton bandage that was coated in some black paste that smelled strongly of medicine and spices. The cool paste had stung at first against the wound, but Lily bit her lip and didn’t cry out. Ah Yan’s touch had been gentle, and Lily asked him if he was a doctor.
“No,” the young Chinaman had said. Then he had smiled at her and given her a piece of dried plum coated in sugar for her to suck on. Lily thought it was the sweetest thing she had ever tasted.
Ah Yan rinsed the rag out in the basin next to Logan. The water was again bright red and this was already the third basin of hot water.
Logan paid no attention to Ah Yan’s ministrations. “We’ll play on a smaller board than usual since you are just learning. This game is called wei qi, which means ‘the game of surrounding.’ Think of laying down each seed as driving a post into the field as you build a fence to surround the land you are claiming. The posts don’t move, do they?”
Lily was playing with lotus seeds while Logan’s pieces were watermelon seeds. The white and black pieces made a pretty pattern on the grid between them.
“So it’s kind of like the way they get land in Kansas,” Lily said.
“Yes,” Logan said. “I guess it’s a little like that, though I’ve never been to Kansas. You want to surround the largest territory possible, and defend your land well so that my posts can’t carve out another homestead in your land.”
He took a long drink from the gourd in his hand. The gourd looked a little like a snowman, a small sphere on top of a larger one, with a piece of red silk tied around the narrow waist to provide a good grip. The golden surface of the gourd was shiny from constant use in Logan’s rough, leathery palm. Logan had told her that the gourd grew on a vine. When the gourd was ripe it was cut down and the top sawn off so that the seeds inside could be taken out to make the shell into a good bottle for wine.
Logan smacked his lips and sighed. “Whiskey, it’s almost as good as sorghum mead.” He offered Lily a sip. Lily, shocked, shook her head. No wonder her mother thought these Chinamen barbaric. To drink whiskey out of a gourd was bad enough, but to offer a drink to a young Christian girl?
“There’s no whiskey in China?”
Logan took another drink and wiped the whiskey from his beard. “When I was a boy I was taught that there were only five flavors in the world, and all the world’s joys and sorrows came from different mixtures of the five. I’ve learned since then that’s not true. Every place has a taste that’s new to it, and whiskey is the taste of America.”
“Lao Guan,” Ah Yan called out. Logan turned toward him. Ah Yan spoke to him in Chinese, gesturing at the basin. After looking at the water in the basin, Logan nodded. Ah Yan got up with the basin and poured out the water in a far corner of the field before going into the house.
“He’s gotten as much of the poisoned blood and dirt and torn rags out as possible,” Logan explained. “Time to sew me up.”
“My dad thinks your name is Logan,” Lily said. “I knew he was wrong.”
Logan laughed. His laugh was loud and careless, the same as the way he sang and told his stories. “All my friends call me Lao Guan, which just means ‘Old Guan,’ Guan being my family name. I guess it sounds like ‘Logan’ to your dad. I kind of like the ring of it. Maybe I’ll just use it as my American name.”
“He also picked out a new name for himself when we came here,” Lily said. “Mother doesn’t think he should do that.”
“I don’t know why she should be so against it. This is a country full of new names. Didn’t she change her name when she married your father? Everyone gets a new name when they come here.”
Lily thought about this. It was true. Her father didn’t call her “Nugget” until they lived here.
Ah Yan came back with a needle and some thread. He proceeded to stitch up the wound on Logan’s shoulder. Lily looked closely at Logan’s face to see if he would wince with the pain.
“It’s still your turn,” Logan said. “And I’m going to capture all your seeds in that corner if you don’t do something about it.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“This?” ?The way he pointed at his shoulder by wagging his beard made Lily laugh. “This is nothing compared to the time I had to have my bones scraped.”
“You had to have your bones scraped?”
“Once I was shot with a poisoned arrow, and the tip of the arrow was buried into the bones in my arm. I was going to die unless I got the poison out. Hua Tuo, the most skilled doctor in the world, came to help me. He had to cut into my arm, peel back the flesh and skin, and scrape off the poisoned bits of bone with his scalpel. Let me tell you, that hurt a lot more than this. It helped that Hua Tuo had me drink the strongest rice wine he could find, and I was playing wei qi against my first lieutenant, a very good player himself. It took my mind off the pain.”
“Where was this? Back in China?”
“Yes, a long time ago back in China.”
Ah Yan finished his sutures. Logan said something to him, and Ah Yan handed a small silk bundle to him. Lily was about to ask Ah Yan about the bundle, but he just smiled at her and held a finger to his lips. He pointed at Logan and mouthed “watch” at her.
Logan laid the bundle on the ground and unrolled the silk wrap. Inside was a set of long, silver needles. Logan picked up one of the needles in his right hand, and before Lily could even yell “Stop,” he stuck the needle into his left shoulder, right above the wound.
“What did you do that for?” Lily squeaked. For some reason the sight of the long needle sticking out of Logan’s shoulder made her more queasy than when Logan’s shoulder had exploded with Obee’s shot.
“It stops the pain,” Logan said. He took another needle and stuck it into his shoulder about an inch above the other one. He twisted the end of the needle a little to make sure it settled in the right spot.
“I don’t believe you.”
Logan laughed. “There are many things little American girls don’t understand, and many things old Chinamen don’t understand. I can show you how it works. Does your leg still hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Here, hold still.” Logan leaned forward and held out his left palm low to the ground. “Put your foot in my hand.”
“Hey, you can move your left arm again.”
“Oh, this is nothing. The time I had to have my bones scraped, I was back on the battlefield within two hours.”
Lily was sure that Logan was joking with her. “My father was shot in the leg and chest in the War, and it took him eight months before he could walk again. He still has a limp.” She lifted her foot, wincing at the pain. Logan cupped her ankle with his palm.
His palm felt warm, hot actually, on Lily’s ankle. Logan closed his eyes and began to breathe slowly and evenly. Lily felt the heat on her ankle increase. It felt nice, like having a very hot towel pressed around her injured calf. The pain gradually melted into the heat. Lily felt so relaxed and comfortable that she could fall asleep. She closed her eyes.
“Okay, you are all set.”
Logan released her ankle and gently deposited her foot on the ground. Lily opened her eyes and saw a great silver needle sticking out from her leg just below her kneecap.
Lily was going to cry out in pain until she realized that she didn’t feel any. There was a slight numbness around where the needle went into her skin, and heat continued to radiate from it, blocking any pain from her wound.
“That feels weird,” Lily said. She experimentally flexed her leg a few times.
“As good as new.”
“Mother is going to faint when she sees this.”